Business support specialists embrace 'diversity'

Leading specialists in the field of business support gathered at Preston North End’s Deepdale Stadium to consider how to improve the support they offer to black and minority ethnic enterprises. BME-led ventures now add £40 billion to the national economy each year and represent a full 10 per cent of the country’s small and medium sized businesses.

Leading specialists in the field of business support gathered at Preston North End’s Deepdale Stadium to consider how to improve the support they offer to black and minority ethnic enterprises.

BME-led ventures now add £40 billion to the national economy each year and represent a full 10 per cent of the country’s small and medium sized businesses.

A panel of experts spoke of the need to recognise cultural diversity as an asset to the North West regional economy because it enables people to share ideas and to combine their talents in new ways. They also emphasised the importance of supporting grass roots enterprise, which Professor Monder Ram, Head of Centre for Ethnic Minority Enterprise (CRÈME) at De Montfort University, Leicester described as a ‘ladder of opportunity’ for many people living within minority ethnic communities.

As one of the key speakers, Professor Ram introduced the conference to the idea of ‘superdiversity’ – a term he used to describe the increasing complexity of the British economy, which is now influenced and affected by many new and dynamic factors. As a consequence of increasing globalisation, the community make-up is even more diverse than in the past – not only in terms of ethnicity but also in terms of the skills, wealth and education of modern migrants. As a result, levels of awareness, exposure to enterprise culture and the support afforded to people varies enormously between communities, so there is a clear need for support providers to ensure that they adopt an all inclusive approach.

Successive speakers built upon the idea of superdiversity and the need to provide appropriate support to all those who need it, regardless of their ethnicity, age, gender or past experience. NWDA Strategy Manager Yvonne Sampson noted that support needed to be wider reaching without being restricted to very specific and separately defined groups such as ‘the young’, ‘the old’, and ‘minority ethnic communities.’

Dr Nighat Awan, Chair of the Ethnic Minority Business Forum emphasised the importance of bringing people together to ensure that their views are heard and noted that the EMBF provided an ideal vehicle for doing so. An entirely voluntary body, it gave people a real voice, she said and today, many important organisations listen carefully to what it has to say.

Enterprise4All’s Chief Executive, Ilyas Munshi then explained how his organisation had changed in recent years to keep pace with the increasing diversity of the region. The company grew out of the Asian Business Federation, an organisation that now has more than 3,500 members across the North West, but E4All’s remit has broadened to encompass other under-represented groups including women, social enterprises, people with disabilities and the over 50s.

Within ethnic communities, he explained, the traditional stereotyping is changing and women in particular are now taking a much more proactive role in supporting the family, which is one of the reasons why support for female entrepreneurs has become E4All’s single fastest growing area of intensive business support provision.

The final speaker was Dr Sylvia Sham of the Wai Yin Chinese Women Society – a Manchester based social enterprise that has forged links with all kinds of local support organisations, public authorities and community groups and which has become a powerful force for promoting community cohesion. She noted that minority ethnic communities were often termed ‘hard to reach groups’ by local authorities and business support organisations but, in reality, they weren’t hard to reach at all; Wai Yin had proved that by approaching people in the right way and with the right kinds of support services, such groups could be reached, assisted and encouraged to play a vital role in community development.

After the presentations, around 80 delegates took part in discussions about possible ways of improving the support services that are available to minority ethnic businesses. The results were fed back to NWDA and Business Link facilitators and it is hoped that the findings will inform future business support policy.

The conference was supported by Business Link North West and the Ethnic Minority Business Forum (EMBF NW), and funded by the North West Development Agency. It was hosted by Enterprise4All, a not for profit enterprise support agency based in Lancashire.